The Sinai

All three of the West's great religions - Judaism, Christianity, and Islam - know Sinai as a holy land, a vast expanse traversed time and again by prophets, saints, pilgrims and warriors. The Sinai is most familiar to many as the "great and terrible wilderness" through which the Israelites wandered for forty years. However, it was also the path by which Amr swept down into Egypt in 640 AD, bringing Islam in his wake.

Situated on the cross roads of Egypt, Israel, Jordon, Syria and Saudi Arabia it is part of the Middle East, geologically it is still part of the African plate and the Rift Valley, the only land bridge out of Africa which our ancestors used to colonise the rest of the world.

The south of the peninsular is comprised of weathered Granite peaks, surrounded by alluvial fans on the coast; further north the geology changes and you find eroded sedimentary rock formations laden with fossils from when the Sinai was at the bottom of an ocean.